Love is deaf

I almost admire Rihanna's audacity. She is a willful woman in a world still fearful of them. She knew exactly the kind of backlash that collaborating again with Chris Brown would inspire and she did it anyway, taunting the world via Twitter last week in advance of last night's release of the remix of Talk That Talk's "Birthday Cake." (One tweet repurposed the lyrics of "Hard" from her superior, post-abuse album Rated R: "They can say whatever, Ima do whatever... No pain is forever <-----YUP! YOU KNOW THIS.") Rihanna has been unfairly accused of having no on-record personality, but the statement (and all of the psychological implications) made in one remix is bolder than that which your average contemporary pop star makes over the course of a single album.

"My selfish decision for love could result into some young girl getting killed. I could not be easy with that part. I couldn't be held responsible for telling them, 'Go back.' Even if Chris never hit me again, who's to say that their boyfriend won't? Who's to say that they won't kill these girls? And these are young girls...I just didn't realize how much of an impact I had on these girls' lives until that happened. It was a wake-up call. It was a wake-up call for me big time, especially when I took myself out to the situation and I'll say that to any young girl who's going through domestic violence: Don't react off of love. Eff love. Come out of the situation and look at it third person and for what it really is. And then make your decision, because love is so blind."

So is she regressing or making a cynical bid for attention (the second best currency in a rapidly crumbing industry)? Is she back in love, blinded all over again, the product of the effect on which she wisely opined two and a half years ago? None of this was any of our business, by the way, until she made it that way with such a public act of reapproval. As irresponsible as it would be for her to privately hook back up with Brown, there'd be little left to do but sigh over her not understanding the extent of the career she's chosen, that her words from 2009 were indeed true and that when you are a celebrity, at least part of your life is no longer your own. That's the trade-off for mass adulation and wealth. You don't have to be an explicit role model, but like it or not, you are an example.

The convenient thing about this "Birthday Cake" remix (and the infinitely duller "Turn Up the Music" remix, his song on which she now appears, in a one-two punch of releases) is that we need not examine a set of messy, complicated personal lives to critique the Rihanna/Chris Brown reunion: This time it's musical. It once was, too: Brown guested on a terrible remix of Rihanna's "Umbrella" before the pair confirmed their relationship. That one's long forgotten, as it deserves to be (it was dropped from playlists after the abuse reports, but it always seemed like a doomed, shrimpy attempt at eclipsing something that was iconic on first play).

The "Birthday Cake" remix will not evaporate so quickly. Like its Coldstone namesake, it will stick to the ass of pop culture. That's too bad because it is a terrible, terrible song. Brown, who's an embarrassment to the soul tradition, adds nothing as usual. His limited range and whiny tone help expose the song's ultimate bankruptcy -- what ran on Talk That Talk at a brisk minute and a half has been stretched to over three and a half minutes and you feel every extra second. Brown merely reiterates what Rihanna says verbatim. (Her in the first verse: "It's not even my birthday, but he wanna lick the icing off / I know you want it in the worst way, can't wait to blow my candles out"; Him in the second: "It's not even her birthday, but I wanna lick the icing off / Give it to her in the worst way, can't wait to blow the candles out.") His third person pronouns in reference to her help us look at this situation for what it really is: Chemistry-free. (When he does refer to her in the second person, it's to say, "Girl, I want to fuck you right now / Been a long time I been missing your body." So yeah, that's no better.)

An irritating clack of a song that finds its hook in a monotone, "Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake!," the "Birthday Cake" remix is a miserable experience. It's a shame because the original was something special: Not a song or an interlude, but a statement. It's a statement in which a woman sings, "I'mma make you my bitch," and it sounds plausible, not just wishful or compensatory to someone who already expressed what he thought of her humanity all over her face. The original features a hard cut right after Rihanna sings the words, "I wanna fuck you right now." She's so serious, so in control of her sexuality that she can't even be bothered to end her own song. It's real a shame that she somewhere lost belief in the power of leaving things unfinished.

Comments

It's posts like this that cause me to think that you have very limited understanding of people, that you have a limited understanding of pop culture, and that should be limited to posting about your cats.

I was really looking forward to an extended version of "Birthday Cake." Too bad now I won't be able to listen to it without wanting to gag, ick.

That said, I would never want to put the responsibility on Rihanna to have to accomodate the situation. Its a shame that because of someone else's actions, she can't conduct her career as she pleases. But its not like she needs this, she's doing pretty ok without CB (and the kid from the "We Found Love" video that she was supposedly dating was gorgeous). I'm not sure if this career decision comes from too much pride or too little.

I still wonder if this wasn't the intended result from the beginning. It's not like there haven't been whispers about their re-connecting for quite a while, now. And I always thought it odd that the songs ends so abrubtly. Just a theory, but I think Brown was always meant to be on the track, and the album version was just truncated so the label could hedge their bets. That said, yeah, Brown is a passable singer, at best, an ok dancer, and an asshole, in general, so I still don't understand why anyone roots for him. His most memorable song was a freakin' gum commercial. Sigh.

It's interesting to see all the controversy swirling around this at the same time as the Yeardley Love murder trial at UVA is going on (I'm in Virginia so it is allll over the news), which is a case of a woman who by all accounts had a very strong support system but still kept going back to her abusive boyfriend. It seems like, culturally, we still don't really know what to do about abusive relationships other than be all "They're bad!" but not move beyond that.

Though I agree that a celebrity, by virtue of their notoriety, should be conscious of, and not deny, their power and influence over others, I do think it's shaming and ridiculous to expect a victim, ANY victim (famous ones included) to be a "role model" for other victims. Every abuse situation is terrifying, complicated, and unique; what she's going through is not like what any other victim has gone through. In fact, being in the public lens, she has probably been much more isolated from resources, and much more ridiculed and abused by others, than most victims have. So I really can't speak to how she is acting now, how she acted then, and what she said in 2009. I don't doubt that she was genuine in her feelings then, just as she is now. If she feels willing to make these public steps with her former abuser, knowing the ramifications, I will allow her that right, as a victim, without passing judgement, because I am privileged enough to have never known an abusive partner.

I CONCUR.
I would add something else, but there's nothing more to say. We're watching something intense, slightly disturbing, (and sonically terrible)play out. I cringe to see/ and hear where this goes.

This entire situation saddens me immensely and just breaks my heart. I've always said Rihanna needed therapy; not just from her dating an abusive asshole but also from her abusive childhood experiences. I have no clue what's going on in her head or why no one tried to stop this from happening, but it's obvious that Fist Brown is taking advantage of her mental instability to promote his new album, which is beyond vile and disgusting. Not to mention he completely fucking ruined "Cake"...he truly is Douche Overlord.

I can only hope that when the public backlash comes, it doesn't send her the way of Britney, or Whitney, or worse.

I've always thought they were both pretty awful. Chris Brown - clearly the definition of a douche bag, and Rihanna has just always seemed like a puppet. Has she ever given an interview where she seemed to have even an ounce of a personality? I watched her on Graham Norton sometime ago, and she just put me to sleep.

It wasn't until I read the chorus spelled out in your post ("Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake! Cake!") that I realized, according to the "Who Wants Cake?" episode of "Strangers With Candy," the remix of "Birthday Cake" is basically an "Other Sister"-style retard sex anthem. Which is totally and completely appropriate.

Thank you for articulating what I couldn't about this really confusing development. I don't think I've seen a celebrity regress in such a confident, sure way. I mean, she devoted an entire era/album to her recovery process and, as you said, seemed to understand the situation in her Diane Sawyer interview. She even said his apology sounded like he was just reading from a teleprompter. So what gives??

I get that a lot can change in 4 years but I can't imagine her memories of that night fading in any way. If they are together again, what happens when their next argument breaks out? Will he control himself? His actions over the last 4 years say nope, which is pretty terrifying when you think about it.

I couldn't figure out why the Talk That Talk era wasn't quite gelling with me - something felt off. I kept thinking "These just sound like Rated R demos". I think she really has regressed, now. I think We Found Love was a "message" to him that she still had feelings for him, which is why she put a lookalike of him in the video and based the plot around their relationship.

Over the last few months, she'd been posting all sorts of angsty relationship "quotes" or lyrics like a lovestruck teenager. After LOUD, I thought she'd moved on but TTT made me think something was still bothering her. I was right.

Now, the romantic in me wants Drake to come whisk her away from that beast and take good care of her

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Totally agree with you about the song, it's dull and uninspired. Discussing Rihanna kind of reminds me of rap music's theoretical sea full of haters - how much music and identity now is played to imaginary haters. Rihanna getting back together with Chris Brown is so inconsequential, and they're both totally uninteresting, that we really have to imagine scarred teenage girls - who probably don't exist - in order to find the issue particularly poignant. Compare Rihanna's one-time beatdown to lives like Tina Turner's (or simply the private pecadilloes of everyone from Courtney Love to Whitney Houston) and you really have something of closer resemblance to a party girl getting too drunk and falling down than a real public tragedy. As for Chris Brown, the fact that his whole smug-asshole rendition is a panty-dropper has been black culture's problem from Day 1. He should have read as an insincere date rapist back when he was singing smooth R&B, and that's a larger cultural problem that hints at the real subconscious of sex-, fame- and money-obsession.

Also: Rihanna has the best songwriters working in the least tediously caucasian, least boring template, and that's simply why she's the best one in the biz right now. Beyonce went lily-white ever since Irreplaceable simply because the sales were there and has been a nearly full-on bore ever since, Nicki Minaj gave up on good, edgy music after Massive Attack flopped and Your Love was a hit, and artists like Jessie J or Katy Perry (who is also a good songwriter) really don't allow their personas to go outside of the Disney Channel. Rihanna has the good fortune of getting the best tunes written by the best people with the least restrictions. She also has the good fortune of having the kind of voice machines were born to drip with reverb. But nobody else will really accept or place edgy pop hits on the radio. Everyone else is too worried about sounding Black Eyed Peas-ish.